Wall Street and Washington baddies plot—ploddingly—against the public interest in another lurid shocker from investment banker Frey (The Takeover, 1995). Lewis Webster, senior partner at the venerable securities firm Walker Pryce, puts up-and-coming deal-maker Mace McLain in charge of a new $2 billion fund established to make a killing in the market crash he ostensibly believes is imminent. Although mildly disturbed by his superior's timing and analysis of the economy, ambitious Mace accepts the assignment. At the same time, he's detailed to recruit Rachel Sommers, a whip-smart MBA candidate at Columbia, where alumnus Mace is an instructor. Unbeknownst to the yuppie financier, his venal boss is part of a byzantine scheme engineered by CIA Director Malcolm Becker—a potential candidate for the Republican presidential nomination who needs big money to replace the cash he's misappropriated in aid of his White House aspirations. With evidence of Webster's hitherto unsuspected insider-trading crimes on file, the spymaster has no trouble blackmailing the elder Wall Street statesman into launching the so- called vulture fund. Leaving nothing to chance, Becker has enlisted a gang of Arab terrorists to wreak havoc throughout the US, precipitating a market collapse. Meanwhile, Mace (who's falling for Rachel) learns from the comely grad student that the sources of his fund's capital are not what he was led to believe. His original suspicious confirmed, Mace hits the road and in a West Virginia backwater unearths evidence of the Becker/Webster intrigue. Concurrently, a band of heavily armed intruders seizes control of the nuclear plant that supplies New York City's electricity. Before he can deliver the nation from the evil conspirators, however, Mace must save his own hide and reclaim Rachel from the Becker minions who've abducted her. A lone upright bull takes on lowlife bears and power-mad politicos in a paranoid fantasy almost totally devoid of pace or suspense. (First printing of 150,000; author tour)
Pub Date: Aug. 14, 1996
ISBN: 0-525-93986-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1996
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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